


Lifeline

by MalsWords



Category: Alien: Isolation (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalsWords/pseuds/MalsWords
Summary: “Ricardo– Ricardo if you’re there pick up.”  Her radio stays silent for a few pounding breaths before he responds. He sounds exhausted, drained. She knows he’ll be able to hear the tears in her voice.“I’m here– I’m here, sorry.”“Samuels is gone.” She chokes out, hand over her mouth to stop her shaky breath from picking up.“Shit.”





	Lifeline

Every siren on this god forsaken station is screaming. Ripley can’t think, let alone hear him, let alone function. He’s calling out cables for her to disable and she can’t, she can’t believe this is happening, that he was this stupid. Samuels was the only robot on this god damned station worth his salt, and she wasn’t going to lose him to this shit storm.

She hacks the door open as he slumps to the floor. He’s speaking– something about APOLLO but she doesn’t care, it’s not worth it. When she breaks her way into the chamber, she knows she lost.

“I pulled them out in the right order!” She screams at him, buffering her face from the flames with her arm. The sirens have stopped, the emergency lights dimmed. He’s slumped next to the table and she can’t breathe and everything hurts more than it has any right to.

“Samuels– Samuels god damn it all get up, come on, I need you!” She’s begging and she knows it, and she doesn’t care. She grabs at the front of his stupid, much-too-large jacket and tugs at it, feeling like a child, feeling like a failure. He’s too heavy to move effectively, his head lolling to the side uselessly. 

Ripley cries. She’s been holding out so long, being the strong one. Being a leader, vainly stitching this shithole together. She sobs until she’s screaming, face buried in his jacket, shoulders heaving.

He was the last ray of hope.

She cries until she can’t anymore, until her cheeks burn as much as her eyes, until her fingers can’t dig into the fabric of him anymore. When she has no tears left to cry, she slumps against him and stays there, head against his chest.

She knows she has to move. She knows she’s stronger than this. Stay focussed. Ripley is no flower, no damsel in distress. Only human, her mind supplies for her. She scoffs.

It takes her a sluggishly long time to struggle to her feet, but she makes it. She’s torn between staring down at him and running so hard she never looks back.

“Ricardo– Ricardo if you’re there pick up.” Her radio stays silent for a few pounding breaths before he responds. He sounds exhausted, drained. She knows he’ll be able to hear the tears in her voice.

“I’m here– I’m here, sorry.”

“Samuels is gone.” She chokes out, hand over her mouth to stop her shaky breath from picking up.

“Shit.”

She wants his jacket. She doesn’t know why she needs it, but she takes the time to work him out of it, slides it around her shoulders. It’s huge on her, and she finds that comforting. It smells like latex and dry-cleaning around the collar, but it carries a soft scent of smoke as well. She tugs the collar up around her neck and sighs.

Her boots are too loud on the laminate as she leaves the chamber, and the door clicks with a finality that breaks her heart.

She’s almost out of the mist-filled room before she hears it, and at first she thinks it’s her mind playing tricks on her.

“I just… Wanted Amanda Ripley to have closure.“

Her blood turns to ice and she whirls around to face the large window.

"Samuels–” she breathes, but she doesn’t let it overwhelm her, doesn’t have that in her. She moves quickly to the glass regardless– his position has changed, slightly. She’s not sure if it’s from her manhandling him. If she’s going crazy on top off all this bullshit, she wasn’t sure if she could keep going.

Samuels lifts his head and the sound that leaves her isn’t human.

“What the actual fuck.” She laugh-sobs, scared to feel, scared to move. He blinks sluggishly. When his eyes finally flick up to meet hers, she sucks in a painful breath and lurches away, moving with measured steps along the room, through the busted door.

She can’t recall crossing the room to him. It doesn’t feel like she got up from his lap at all.

“What the fuck. What the actual fuck.” Her hands are on his face, and he’s the wrong temperature.

“System defrag complete. Emergency unit backup restored.” He doesn’t speak the words, they emanate from him in a voice that’s not quite his. It’s freakishly eerie, but the fact that he’s thrumming beneath her hands is enough. She searches his eyes for answers.

“Why are you… Still here?” He works out, voice rough. He sounds like he was asleep, not cold and dead. She wants to slap him.

“Why– what do you mean, why am I still here? Of course I’m here– Samuels–”

He shakes his head, licks his lips, “Rebooting takes over an hour, Ripley.”

“…Oh.”

“You haven’t left, have you..?”

She looks away, ducks her head. No, of course not. How could she? She worries at her lip with her teeth instead of replying.

His eyes flicker across her face and his eyebrows draw together a hairs breadth before his soft frown catches up. “You’ve been crying.” He licks his lips again, as though speaking is still difficult. His skin is quickly rising to meet her temperature beneath her hands. “I hope– it was not my… Because of me.”

Ripley eyes burn again and she could kick herself, this is stupid, this is–

“Amanda, hey. Hey–” He cuts her thoughts off and she scrubs the back of her hand against her face. She doesn’t have enough to tears left in her for them to fall. She thanks the universe for that, at least.

“Can you stand?” She manages, rocking back on her heels and letting her hands slip from his face to his shoulders. His smile is soft and pained.

“Yes– I believe I can. I’ll– need to re… Stretch, a bit, but I should be fine. Thank you. For… everything.”

Ripley slides back and gets to her feet, moving out of his way so he can stand. He struggles at it, at first, gripping the edge of the table and threatening to collapse at any moment. He rolls his joints and she can sort of see the tilt of his structure adjusting itself through his thin undershirt. She wonders briefly if that was the reason he wore the large, puffy uniform jacket. She idly picks at the seams of one of the pockets.

When he stops to return the examination with a red tint flushing across his face, she freezes. His eyes flicker up and down her frame.

“You’re wearing my coat.” He states blandly, though his gaze keeps moving from meeting hers to the jacket and back. This can’t be the first time he’s noticed it.

She can feel the humiliation burning her face, and she quickly tugs at the snaps. She isn’t looking at him, so she jolts when he lays his hand across her collarbone, obstructing the top of the zipper. He’s taken a few steps closer since she last looked up.

“No– keep it. If you wanted it, you should take it.” He licks his lips again and it clicks that it’s a god damn nervous tick. Her synthetic companion has a nervous tick. She almost laughs in his face, it’s so endearing.

She only actually wears the jacket for a good fifteen minutes before she has to take it off. Samuels watches her politely as she shyly shrugs out of it, straightening it against her arm before handing it back.

“It’s too warm to wear, but I’m going to hold you to it being my coat.” Ripley smiles. She tugs her coverall top down to tie the sleeves around her waist, unbuttoning the denim shirt underneath. Everything being on fire was not doing it for her temperature.

They had been working their way through the venting systems of Sevastapol, creeping around the destroyed halls and burning rooms. With the creature gone there was a sense of relative quiet– Samuels moving with her made taking down stray Joes almost clockwork. They’d only encountered two in the fifteen minute span since leaving the chamber, but in that time they had worked out a system of stun baton and neck cracking that proved efficient.

Her screaming shoulder was thanking her for it more and more. Say what you would about the Seegson droids; their skulls took a beating and the reverberations were making her bones ache.


End file.
